Speakers

Resilient landscapes to face catastrophic forest fires

 

Felipe González served as Prime Minister of Spain from 1982 to 1996 being one of the key political figures in the history of Spain in the second half of the twentieth century. A major figure in the democratic transition process, he was the third President of the Government of Spain from the restoration at the end of the 1970s and is the longest standing holder of the post of president, covering four parliaments and a total of thirteen and a half years. The modernisation of Spain and its full integration into the European concert took place during his years in government between 1982 and 1996. Although he is now retired from politics, the former president continues to be active in various areas of Europe and Latin America.

 

Esko Aho served as Prime Minister of Finland from 1991 to 1995 and as a Member of Parliament from 1983 to 2003. He is currently Executive Chairman of East Office of Finnish Industries, representing the leading Finnish corporations in Russia, and a Consultative Partner at Nokia Corporation. Mr. Aho serves as a member of the Executive Board at the International Chamber of Commerce and is an invited member of the Club of Madrid, an independent organisation of former heads of state and government dedicated to strengthening democracy. He is Executive in Residence of Aalto University in Helsinki and Senior Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where he pursues research on the changing role of the state in maintaining welfare and global competitiveness. He is EFI's Strategic Advisor on Europe-Russian cooperation.

Marc Palahí is the Director of the European Forest Institute and responsible for leading the organisation towards an acknowledged pan-European science-policy platform. Previously he led EFI’s policy support activities and during this time was instrumental in launching ThinkForest, a European high-level science forum on the future of forests. He has also worked as Head of EFI’s Mediterranean Facility, EFIMED. He has a PhD in forestry and economics and an MSc in forestry engineering.

 

Rosário Alves is the Executive Director of Forestis - Associação Florestal de Portugal. She holds a degree in Forest Engineering and an MBA in Marketing and Commercialization. She has been involved in several working groups and advisory bodies, namely the Ministry of Agriculture of Portugal. Internationally, she represents Forestis in the Union of Southern European Foresters (USSE) and in the European Confederation of Forest Producers (CEPF).

She has collaborated and coordinated several international research and development projects in areas related to professional training, sustainable forest management certification, use of forest biomass for energy purposes, fire risk prevention, innovation, economics and forestry policies.

 

Isabel Bombal Díaz is the Director General of Rural Development, Innovation and Forest Policy at the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. She has a university degree in Agricultural Engineering, specialising in agri-food industries, and is a university expert in Industrial Quality. She is a career civil servant and member of the State Corps of Agricultural Engineers. She has also been Head of Technical Section in the Subdirectorate General of Food Planning, and has worked in the Permanent Representation of Spain to the EU in Brussels.

 

 

Dave E. Calkin is a Supervisory Research Forester at the Human Dimensions Program of the US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Montana. Dr. Calkin leads the Wildfire Risk Management Science team working to improve risk based fire management decision making through improved science development, application, and delivery. His research incorporates economics with risk and decision sciences to explore ways to evaluate and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of wildfire management programs.

Marc Castellnou is an expert fire analyst in planning, but also a commander of strategic and tactical operational incidents. He has introduced fire ecology into decision making on forest fires in Spain and also an operational prescribed burning programme, fire analysis as a tool linking prevention and suppression, and has promoted a concept based on lessons learned in the fire service. Marc is also president of the Pau Costa Foundation, a platform to harness the knowledge and experience gathered by specialists in ecology and fire management at national and international levels. He is a member of the European Civil Protection Mechanism (DG-ECHO). 

Val Charlton is Managing Director of Landvista NPC t/a LANDWORKS, South Africa's leading nonprofit company of green and community-centric solutions for distressed environments that works with people in the landscape.

She manages a range of projects and programmes that bring together social, economic and environmental dynamics.  She strongly advocates that, globally, communities are the solution, not the problem, when it comes to solving environmental challenges, such as global warming, wildfires, ecological infrastructure health and the Wildland Urban Interface. She introduced Firewise concepts into Chile, Portugal, Tanzania, Indonesia and South Africa.

Marta Corella is mayor of Orea, a municipality in the province of Guadalajara (Spain) and Forest Engineer specialised in rural development, dynamization of small communities and biomass management. She works as a Coordinator of the Commission of Forest Municipalities COMUFOR, promoting the Bioeconomy in rural areas. 

 

Esther Esteban Rodrigo is Director of the National Institute of Agricultural and Food Research and Technology (INIA) of Spain, which reports to the Ministry of Science and Technology. She holds a degree in Agricultural Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and a PhD in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Cordoba (Spain). She has participated in several research projects and has conducted research at international universities such as Michigan State University (USA) and the University of Guelph (Canada).

 

Javier Ezquerra is Head of the Forest Management Service within the General Directorate of Natural Environment at the Department of Public Works and Environment of the Regional Government of Castile and Leon, Spain. He has a PhD in Forestry Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He has 24 years of experience in the sector, working in forest fire prevention and extinction operations and has produced more than 70 scientific, technical or informative publications on forest history and management.

Mercedes Guijarro is Head of Forest Fires Laboratory, INIA-CIFOR, attached to the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

 

Elena Hernández Paredes is Technical Officer at the Area of Forest Fire Defense of the Directorate-General for Rural Development, Innovation and Forestry Policy, attached to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food of Spain. She has a MSc in Forestry from the Technical University of Madrid, Spain. She started her professional career as a helitack crew boss in different locations in Spain. Since 2009 she is a civil servant member of the Corps of State Forestry Engineers, devoted to wildfire prevention, preparedness and suppression at the Spanish Forest Fire Service. She is also in charge of international relationships on wildfires, having worked for a year at the General Directorate of Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) of the European Commission.

 

Carmen Hernando Lara holds a PhD in Forestry Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. She is an official of the Principal Investigators' Scheme of Public Research Agencies at the Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. She is director of the Centre for Forest Research (CIFOR) at INIA.

José Manuel Jaquotot Sáenz de Miera is a Forestry Engineer from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and an MBA from IESE (International Business School). He belongs to the Corps of State Forestry Engineers since 1980 and has been developing different activities in the private sector for 28 years. 

Since 2014 he has been the Deputy Director General responsible for Forestry Policy in the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. His responsibilities include the National Forestry Policy of the Spanish government, as well as Spanish representation in international organizations and supervision of international cooperation agreements and actions in the forestry sector.

 

 

Inazio Martinez de Arano is Head of Office at EFI Mediterranean Facility since June 2013. He was previously Executive President at the Union of Foresters of Southern Europe (USSE), where he was involved in the analysis of forest-related policy developments at European and global levels, and the evaluation of the potential effects of policies and regulations on Mediterranean and South Atlantic forests and forestry. Mr. Martinez has wide experience working in a network organisation and with various stakeholders. He was the coordinator of forest research and a researcher at the Basque Institute for Agricultural Research (NEIKER) as well as a university lecturer in the University of Concepción, Chile. As President of the European Institute for Cultivated Forests (IEFC), he was involved in the establishment of the EFI Atlantic Regional Office.

 

Peter F. Moore is Forest Officer Fire Management for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) where he leads engagement and consultation to confirm and define needs, facilitate planning of technical options and facilitate engagement and coordination on fire management projects and strategic programs with member state governments and across FAO. He has over 35 years of operational, management and policy experience in natural resources with an emphasis in fire management, system development, policy formation and implementation, national MRV systems, forest and land management including advice, evaluation and technical assistance to government agencies and the private sector in Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Ghana, Greece, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Portugal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Thailand, United States, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and Australia.

 

Ana Morgado Souto is the Head of the Forest Restoration and Improvement Section of the Technical Office for Municipal Forest Fire Prevention and Agrarian Development (OTPMIFDA) of Barcelona Provincial Council. She coordinates the drafting of forest management projects and initiatives for the prevention of forest fires through collaboration with municipalities and the promotion of forest associations. She is a forestry engineer from the University of Lleida, having previously obtained the technical forestry engineering in Lugo (University of Santiago de Compostela). She started working on fire extinction and nowadays her work is focused on prevention. She coordinated fire prevention campaigns of the County Council of Barcelona and supported the promotion of local ADF (Forest Defence Associations). 

 

Francisco Rodríguez y Silva holds a PhD in Forestry Engineering, Master in Applied Economics and Master in Research in Economics, who furthered specialization studies in forest fires at the Forest Technology School (Albert Forest Service, Canada, 1993). His professional activity focuses on teaching and research applied to the defence of the forest landscape against fires. He works at the University of Cordoba (Spain), where he is a professor affiliated to the Department of Forest Engineering. He coordinates and directs the activities of the Laboratory of Forest Fires "LABIF-UCO".

 

Eduardo Rojas-Briales is Chair of the Spanish Board of Foresters and professor of Silviculture, Afforestation and Forest Genetics at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Previously he held the position of Assistant Director-General and Head of the Forestry Department, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  He also acted as UN Commissioner General for Expo Milano 2015. Dr. Briales has been on a number of boards and panels including the EFI Scientific Advisory Board. He holds a PhD from Polytechnic University of Madrid.

 

Cathelijne Stoof is an Assistant Professor in Pyrogeography at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. She is board member of the International Association of Wildland Fire and coordinator of the newly funded Innovative Training Network PyroLife, that will train 15 PhD candidates to become the our new generation of integrated fire management experts. PyroLife will foster knowledge transfer from southern Europe to temperate Europe, and from cross-risk approaches including water management to fire.

 

Luca Tacconi is Professor in Environmental Governance at the Crawford School of Public Policy. His research focuses on the economic, political, and social factors that drive environmental change – resulting in loss of biodiversity and climate change – and their implications for rural livelihoods and poverty. He is conducting research on environmental governance, social and economic aspects of deforestation and climate change, payments for environmental services, and research methods for environmental management.

 

Cristina Vega-García is a tenured Associate Professor at the Forest Planning & Landscape Ecology Lab of the University of Lleida (Spain). She holds a PhD in Cartography and Geodesy from the University of Alcalá de Henares and an MSC in Forest Science from the University of Alberta in Canada. She has a long teaching and academic career in the fields of forest management, landscape ecology and forest fire risk analysis. Since 2016, she is Chair of the Department of Agriculture and Forestry Engineering at the University of Lleida (Spain). 

She belongs to the research group GAMES: Multi-scale analysis and management of biodiversity and environmental services in forest and agricultural systems under climate change (SGR-1580 GRE, Generalitat de Catalunya, 2014). She is affiliated to the Centre for Forest Sciences of Catalonia (CTFC).